| ANATOMY | DRUGS | JOB DESCRIPTIONS | COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD | AIRPORT CODES | RELIGIONS | FEEDBACK |
Google






. .
vertical line
Polymorphosis > A short story

polymorphosis
Maxims and Aphorisms
by Andreas Filios

III. Analytics and Critiques


Are you living for the future, the moment or the past?
Are you living only for the past?
For as whatever you have in the future is the accumulation of memories.
And as a result, your actions should completely reflect your expected memories you will carry forward.
So you should ask yourself what you want to take away from every moment and carry forward rather than losing a moment in oblivion.


Life is momentum, should be momentum.
Carry your convictions through life consistently � regardless of rules � just according to your own ethics and morals.


To reach the truth or simply to improve, you will have to go beneath the surface. Then, you might face obstacles. If you try to tackle them you might succeed. You might fail.


Critique of critique
Relativity is the biggest critique of the pursuit of truth, of truth itself.
What is critique good for if it is put into relation itself?


The power of criticism has been marginalised in society. Maybe it never existed.
Growing up in a world where you are expected to take things for granted never permits you to learn how to criticise. So how can you excel in criticising if you were deprived of the tool of criticism from an early age?


Trust and criticism
In order to find absolute truths you have to critically approve or disapprove according to individual beliefs.
As a child, trust is required to unconditionally accept things in a process of education.
The acquired knowledge has to be critically assessed in order to turn knowledge into perceived (absolute) truths. At this stage, however, knowledge is already biased through the unconditional trust in others.
When you are educated enough to be ready to criticise without the bias of your knowledge you have given birth to yourself, in the sense of Erich Fromm.
It is then, that you need no more (and must not use) trust to start understanding and stop learning.
The dilemma is, that the more educated, the more biased. And the less educated, the less chance to give birth to yourself.


Without critics people would not even notice the irrelevance of their behaviour.
People would be driving in circles without a goal on the horizon.
Only the critic can guide people to the right way. The dilemma is that you need to be a critic to appreciate the guidance. Therefore, you should rather wish to be ignorant than seduced by knowledge, for it (knowledge) has no use in a world of ignorance.


It is the good, the harmless that is mistrusted.
Not sound, but noise is trusted (the common, the familiar). Things perceived as a threat are accepted by the instincts without any questioning. And most of the times correctly so. Just what if things were not classified as good or bad and it was up to man to get to know (learn) and not to classify (learn by heart)?


Capture the moment
When you understand and realise reality. When you realise that it is only flesh and bones. And only your past and your duties prevent you from behaving naturally.
Then you realise that only behaving naturally is what the moment is all about.


It�s like two worlds: one asleep and one awake; pretty much like the matrix. And when you know you�re in this coma, you can decide to either continue being deceived or try to wake up.
But frankly, you wouldn�t want to wake up. It�s only that once you know you�re sleeping, your urge to wake up increases with time. Many people never wake up � a life-long deception. Most people don�t even know they�re sleeping.


Nietzsche�s antithesis:
The questioning of (noble) morals is unfounded because the roots for (noble) morals stem from criticism.
So, only if the roots for criticism can be questioned, there is reason to disbelieve in (noble) morals.
But criticism in turn is natural in human nature as a cause of instincts.
And Nietzsche�s questioning of (noble) morals is this very criticism, which is the cause of (noble) morals.


Who is not as he wishes he is, hides himself (sometimes extrovert) behind customs.
Customs and traditions: the biggest enemy of self-discovery? As opposed to him who is almost unaware of himself. Is it him who starts his own customs? Does he succeed or eventually fall back into society�s customs, as those customs have proven successful? Successful yes, but only with regard to the whole society, not the individual.

Light and attitude � language and humour
The light of the German morning, it is crisp but merciful, patient � the ideal condition for a productive attitude.
The morning � isn�t it the most decisive part of the day? As all else (the rest of the day) is dependent on your mood, your state of tiredness, your attitude.
The English morning in comparison is dim, shortening the whole day. The duration of this dimness � until the climax of noon is reached � doesn�t awaken you really: there is some sleepiness carried over to the afternoon.
The Greek morning light is very crisp, unveiling mercilessly, penetrating even. Pushing to a long and �indefinable� climax. Merciless, because the light doesn�t allow you to awake at your own pace. Not sleepiness but tiredness in the afternoon is the effect of the early transformation of the morning into day.

Movement and darkness are the way to the truth.
Light is the source of pretence because it creates subjectivity and prevents imagination. It provided a world you are supposed to believe in. but intelligence exists because of darkness. The counterpart of light, which makes you question the world as you see it in daytime. Without darkness you would just see and accept.
Movement prevents standing still and adopting one surrounding. Movement and darkness, the physical and metaphysical opportunity you are given to find the truth.

You fear darkness?
Why don�t you risk walking into it, straight into your fear to see what is going to happen? Year, even run into it.
Be assured, you wont die of your fear.
Now, once you�ve been right in the centre of that darkness (your fear), your eyes adopt to it and the tiniest source of light unveils the shapes in that darkness. Unsmoothed, unsweetened. That, which you�ve feared initially, turns out not to be bad, good, something to be afraid of or something to strive for. It is nothing. Nothing but plain reality.
Light shed on a tree. And what is a tree? Nothing of significance to you. Nothing that would make a difference. And what is worse than nothing? And if you are afraid of the truth, just like this darkness, maybe it is better to continue to fear it than to unveil it an find out that your fear � truth � in reality is nothing (eternal nothingness � purposelessness � deception).


The acquisition of languages (learning) strongly depends on your consciousness, on your belief/trust in authorities.
To repeat a word in Chinese (as a European) without an accent requires the full trust in the person teaching.
The need to seek for a reason, to ask �why� or �because� is unnecessary and would rather distort the objective.
The greater your consciousness � that is, the higher your trust in authorities during childhood - the greater your ability to acquire languages, or at least the ability to speak them without an accent.

An artist is coined an �artist� by non-artists.
But this is only because the majority of the people are non-artists. If the majority of the people were artists they�d rather call the non-artists artists.
Really, the common thing about artists is their critical consideration of the real world.
So, a philosopher should also be considered an artist; or what makes him different?

Evolution has gone the wrong direction. Or is it the same for animals? Because in the end, all is down to the lowest common denominator: instincts. This is where physical evolution continues (at random and only incrementally) and mental evolution starts from zero*; what is only beginning to prove the incompatibility of body and mind.

*footnote: the pace of mental evolution, however, is much faster than that of physical evolution, which begs the question if there exists an equilibrium of mental and physical state. And if so, if it would make any difference because you would only benefit from it if you were aware of it; but being aware of it would imply instant continuation of mental evolution at a pace already too fast for the body.


The rigidity of he guild-worry-equilibrium
The absence of guilt induces the accumulation/beginning of worries, which otherwise would play a subordinated role, but increase in importance to keep a certain threshold level � the equilibrium � (other worries that usually matter may be forgotten or neglected).
Guilt and worries seem always in equilibrium; if in disequilibrium � and absence of guilt is not substituted by worries - your behaviour becomes increasingly careless (unintentionally), which results sooner or later in feeling of guilt.
It is the individual�s desire to attain his equilibrium that dominates the acceptance to lower one�s equilibrium.

You try to use time, not waste it. Because wasting time causes guilt. In order to avoid this feeling of time-awareness you�ve got to make use of time. But this utilization prevents an absolute time-awareness and makes the action not justify the time usage and also increases the urge of real time-awareness.

The domination of evil over goodness in human actions can be seen in children. In the past, children were raised strictly, often without a parent; wars were more frequent.
Today, children are raised the least strict in human history. Why is it that children are never raised with no strictness at all: i.e. to give them as much freedom as they can have?
Because they are not able to appreciate goodness given to the, so they would not pass it on, either.
Rather, they would find a liking to evil deeds, especially if they are accepted unpunished.
Perspective

The more solitude you experience, the more you become sensitive to your own perception of things.
You purify your perception and evaluation.
If you live in the company of others you tend to try to perceive and evaluate from the others� perspective � out of politeness, opportunity or curiosity.
Then, not only is your reception distorted but also your active communication becomes something not genuine, in the effort to make it more comprehensive to others.

It�s really the occupation of the mind that keeps you from assessing value in all actions on an evermore ambitious scale. Assessing value or putting things into perspective. But is this scale really absolute, or as relative as your highs and lows during deception, when your mind is occupied? What would the absolute scale look like? Dependent on your morals and independent of general morals?
Where your morals are the convictions you have about good and bad, right and wrong, compared to what society tells you is their laws and �general morals�. Dependent on selfishness and independent of charity. Where your selfishness stands for all your actions, which are conducted in the pursuit of your own benefit, whereas charity yields no visible benefit to you.
Only that charity might be linked to your morals, which in turn may shape your scale. Or are these two clearly to be separated? No! Consider Robin Hood: in order to do charity he has to act according to his morals and disregard general morals (law). Ergo: the determinant of the scale are not strictly separable. How can this be achieved? What other determinants may influence this absolute scale?

Losing your memory (and mind even) with age might be some kin of self-protection. Protection against the awareness of truths. But this is not explainable with the Darwinian theory of evolution, as an �omniscient� elderly in past ages would not have power or influence enough to impose their knowledge on the younger generations, who in turn would suppress their natural instincts and tendency to idleness and ignorance in order to be influenced. And even if, when would the oblivious and senile men have evolved? So, just as instincts dominate people�s rationale (sensibility) , so does the vanishing of your memory dominate a maintenance or increase in it2.

Old people
Seeing old people getting older, weaker, losing their powers; doesn�t that reaffirm Nietzsche�s concept of happiness (here the opposite): i.e. overcoming obstacles and increasing your powers?
With old people it is a constant deterioration. No wonder they wish to die. And with no better people than ld people you can see unspoken thoughts. Because their ability to think is less affected by ageing than their memory of words.

Thought as a product of word
An insufficiency of words results in the inadequate recording of thought. But this thought can itself never be generated if no words can adequately describe it.
Ergo, (some) thought potentially only exist in theory, without proof of existence.

The ability to think that there are things you don�t understand makes you believe that knowledge is finite.
Thinking that there are things you don�t know about implies that knowledge is infinite.
How can you understand things without knowing that they exist? Thinking that knowledge is finite and knowing that knowledge is infinite contradict.
Because you don�t understand, there must be things you don�t know. But knowing that you don�t know contradicts the fact that you think that there is a limit. And when there is a limit there is a beyond.
If knowledge is infinite (is it?) you can�t be aware of this beyond. But you are. Again contradiction.
You can�t know that there is a limit for knowledge to be infinite. Knowledge cannot be finite and knowledge cannot be infinite.

Morals are not measurable truths
People will act without morals to attain happiness, which is the feeling of increasing power and overcoming a resistance.

Self-induced limitation to progression in classes and mental enlightenment
The ordinary, simple man might evolve to a sophisticated, educated man of higher class. This is the biggest gain he is likely to realise in his whole life, because �in retrospect- he can see where he came from. And this evolution did not necessarily happen because he did know that there was another class an he wanted to become part of it.
However, once attained, he is unlikely to wanting to return to his former, simple class. Furthermore, it gives him the insight that attaining a higher class is desirable, only that there isn�t an obvious next/higher class than the current one. It appears, with the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom you get closer to the limits of personal progress.

The incremental increase in tiredness
Getting older day by day, and knowing that there is no new start from scratch, like almost all other things you know.
In fact, everything you are aware of has a start and an end; no infinity is perceivable by man. And yet your very live is the only infinite thing that exists. Because neither have you got the ability to remember your birth � let alone imagine your existence before it � nor can you record when your life is over.
Ergo: all life is finite; your life is infinite.

Birth and death
Two states that should not be talked about carelessly: for in both events you are completely unconscious of them � let alone before birth and after death.
Saying �I was born�� sounds completely disrespectful, so authoritarian, as if you can claim this accomplishment. Disrespectful to what, though? Should you not only talk about things carelessly which you know and are aware of?
Saying �he died�� puts him (the subject) in an active position (as compared to the passive �I was born��), when really there isn�t any of his intentional action aimed at dying.
�He died..� or synonymical �he performed death�� is as obscure as random. Again, it is said with disrespect for the end of life.
These notions �birth and death- show how rigid language is, how uncritically they become an everyday term, never ageing and thus never becoming tradition, which in turn would be a symptom to critically examine. So, they will continue to be used inconspicuously.

At what age do children lose their selfishness?
And when they lose it, do they lose it because they act in selflessness and altruism induced by charity?
Or are they selfless because they realise the benefits of it?

Physical, conditional and mental evolution
How good has man become without the fear of physical harm? (e.g. being killed by an animal or struck by an opponent�s weapon)
How good has man become with supplies in abundance? (e.g. where materialistic wealth would enable the hording of relatively/formerly scarce resources)
How good could man become without distraction and delusions?


<< PREVIOUSNEXT >>
Polymorphosis > Analytics and Critiques




https://theodora.com/books/morphosys
CTR070929
Copyright © 1995-2007 Photius Coutsoukis (All Rights Reserved).